The world’s not seen him yet,
Who has not loved a pet.
Not the human pets of noted persons, such as Walter Scott’s Pet
Marjorie, that winsome, precocious little witch, so loved by the “Wizard
of the North,” or Bettina von Arnim, the eccentric, brilliant girl,
whose rhapsodic idolatry was placidly encouraged by the great Goethe,
but the dumb favourites of distinguished men and women.
I must devote a few pages to the various tributes to insects, birds, and
animals, written about with love, pity, or admiration, yet not as pets,
as Burns’s address to the Mousie:
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion
And fellow-mortal;
and another to an unspeakable insect that rhymes with mouse. We
remember, too, his essay on Inhuman Man, as he saw a wounded hare limp
by. The fly has often been honoured in prose or verse, but we all like
best the benevolent speech of dear Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy to the
overgrown bluebottle, which had buzzed about his nose and tormented him
cruelly during dinner, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught
at last. “I’ll not hurt thee,” said Uncle Toby; “I’ll not hurt a hair of
thy head. Go,” said he, lifting up the window—“go, poor devil, get thee
gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold
both thee and me.”
Tristram adds, “The lesson then imprinted has never since been an hour
out of mind, and I often think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to
that one accidental impression.”
The Greek grasshopper must have been a wonderful creature, a sacred
object, and spoken of as a charming songster. When Socrates and Phædrus
came to the fountain shaded by the palm tree, where they had their
famous discourse, Socrates spoke of “the choir of grasshoppers.”
Another makes the insect say to a rustic who had captured him:
Me, the Nymphs’ wayside minstrel, whose sweet note
O’er sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float.
Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a broken string
on his lyre and “filled the cadence due.”
This Pindaric grasshopper seems quite unlike the ravaging locust of the
West. Burroughs suggests that he should be brought to our country, as
some one is trying to introduce the English lark.
Emerson devotes a poem to the burly dozing bumblebee, a genuine
optimist:
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher;
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet.
A delightful volume could be compiled on the literature of bird life,
from the cuckoo, the earliest songster honoured by the poets, to Matthew
Arnold’s canary. Passing on to animals, the Lake poets were interested
to a noticeable degree in these humble companions. In Peter Bell, a poem
that proved Wordsworth’s theories about poetry to be untenable, the ass
is the hero, a veritable preacher, as in the days of Balaam. And
Coleridge, greatly to the amusement of his critics, addressed some lines
To a Young Ass, its Mother being tethered near it:
How askingly its footsteps hither tend!
It seems to say, And have I then one friend?
Innocent foal! thou poor despised forlorn!
I hail thee brother, spite of the fool’s scorn!
And fain would take thee with me, in the dell
Of peace and mild equality to dwell.
Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride,
And Laughter tickle Plenty’s ribless side!
How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play,
And frisk about as lamb or kitten gay!
Yea! and more musically sweet to me
Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be,
Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest
The aching of pale fashion’s vacant breast.
Wordsworth also wrote on The White Doe of Rylstone and The Pet Lamb.
Southey paid his respects to The Pig and a Dancing Bear:
Alas, poor Bruin! How he foots the pole,
And waddles round it with unwieldy steps
Swaying from side to side. The dancing master
Hath had as profitless a pupil in him
As when he tortured my poor toes
To minuet grace, and made them move like clock-work
In musical obedience.
After sympathizing with his “piteous plight” he draws a moral for the
advocates of the slave trade.
He also addressed poems to The Bee and A Spider; the latter must be
given entire, it is so strong and original in its comparisons:
Spider! thou needst not run in fear about
To shun my curious eyes;
I won’t humanely crush thy bowels out
Lest thou should eat the flies;
Nor will I roast thee with a damned delight,
Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see,
For there is One who might
One day roast me.
Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways
Of Satan, sire of lies;
Hell’s huge black spider, for mankind he lays
His toils, as thou for flies.
When Betty’s busy eye runs round the room,
Woe to that nice geometry, if seen!
But where is he whose broom
The earth shall clean?
Thou busy labourer! one resemblance more
May yet the verse prolong,
For, spider, thou art like the poet poor,
Whom thou hast helped in song.
Both busily our needful food to win
We work as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains,
Thy bowels thou dost spin,
I spin my brains.
You remember that the pertinacity with which a spider renewed his
exertions after failing six times to fix his net, roused Bruce to
perseverance and success.
Cackling geese saved Rome, and Caligula shod his favourite horse with
gold and nominated him for vice consul, as he considered him vastly
superior to the men who aspired to that honourable position. Virgil
amused his leisure hours with a gnat. Homer made pets of frogs and mice.
The horse has been dearly loved by many famous people who have not been
ashamed to own it.
Mr. Everett once told a pathetic anecdote of Edmund Burke, that “in the
decline of his life, when living in retirement on his farm at
Beaconsfield, the rumour went up to London that he had gone mad and went
round his park kissing his cows and horses. His only son had died not
long before, leaving a petted horse which had been turned into the park
and treated as a privileged favourite. Mr. Burke in his morning walks
would often stop to caress the favourite animal. On one occasion the
horse recognised Mr. Burke from a distance, and coming nearer and
nearer, eyed him with the most pleading look of recognition, and said as
plainly as words could have said, ‘I have lost him too!’ and then the
poor dumb beast deliberately laid his head upon Mr. Burke’s bosom.
Overwhelmed by the tenderness of the animal, expressed in the mute
eloquence of holy Nature’s universal language, the illustrious statesman
for a moment lost his self-possession and clasping his arms around his
son’s favourite animal, lifted up that voice which had caused the arches
of Westminster Hall to echo the noblest strains that sounded within
them, and wept aloud. Burke is gone; but, sir, so hold me Heaven, if I
were called upon to designate the event or the period in Burke’s life
that would best sustain a charge of insanity, it would not be when, in a
gush of the holiest and purest feeling that ever stirred the human
heart, he wept aloud on the neck of a dead son’s favourite horse.”
Lord Erskine composed some lines to the memory of a beloved pony, Jack,
who had carried him on the home circuit when he was first called to the
bar, and could not afford any more sumptuous mode of travelling:
Poor Jack! thy master’s friend when he was poor,
Whose heart was faithful and whose step was sure!
Should prosperous life debauch my erring heart,
And whispering pride repel the patriot’s part;
Should my foot falter at ambition’s shrine
And for mean lucre quit the path divine,
Then may I think of thee—when I was poor—
Whose heart was faithful and whose step was sure.
The following address of an Arab to his horse is translated from the
Arabic by Bayard Taylor:
Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling!
On my shoulder lay thy glossy head.
Fear not, though the barley sack be empty,
Here’s the half of Hassan’s scanty bread.
Bend thy forehead now to take my kisses,
Lift in love thy dark and splendid eye.
Thou art glad when Hassan mounts the saddle,
Thou art proud he owns thee; so am I.
We have seen Damascus, O my beauty!
And the splendour of the pashas there;
What’s their pomp and riches? Why, I would not
Take them for a handful of thy hair!
Thou shalt have thy share of dates, my beauty,
And thou know’st my water skin is free.
Drink, and welcome; for the springs are distant,
And my strength and safety are in thee.
Bayard Taylor loved and appreciated animals, and in an article in the
Atlantic Monthly of February, 1877, on Studies of Animal Nature, he
says: “If Darwin’s theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it
will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as
far in advance as he is at present.”
He adds: “I have always had a great respect for animals, and have
endeavoured to treat them with the consideration which I think they
deserve. They have quick perceptions, and know when to be confiding or
reticent. I have learned no better way to gain their confidence than to
ask myself, If I were such or such an animal, how should I wish to be
treated by man? and to act upon that suggestion. Since the key to the
separate languages has been lost on both sides, the higher intelligence
must condescend to open some means of communication with the lower.
“The zoölogists unfortunately rarely trouble themselves to do this; they
are more interested in the skull of an elephant, the thigh-bone of a
bird, or the dorsal fin of a fish, than in the intelligence or
rudimentary moral sense of the creature. But the former field is open to
all laymen, and nothing but a stubborn traditional contempt for our
slaves or our hunted enemies in the animal world has held us back from a
truer knowledge of them.
“In the first place, animals have much more capacity to understand human
speech than is generally supposed. Some years ago, seeing the
hippopotamus in Barnum’s Museum looking very stolid and dejected, I
spoke to him in English, but he did not even move his eyes. Then I went
to the opposite corner of the cage and said in Arabic: ‘I know you; come
here to me.’ He instantly turned his head toward me. I repeated the
words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed
his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my
face with a touching delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or
three times found a lion who recognised the same language, and the
expression of his eyes for an instant seemed positively human.”
He also tells his experience with a tame lioness in Africa. “In a short
time we were very good friends. She knew me, and always seemed glad to
see me, though I sometimes teased her a little by getting astride of her
back, or sitting upon her when she was lying down. When she was in a
playful mood she would come to meet me as far as the rope would let her,
get her forepaws around my leg and then take it in her mouth, as if she
were going to eat me up. I was a little alarmed when she did this for
the first time; but I soon saw that she was merely in play, and had no
thought of hurting me, so I took her by the ears and slapped her sides,
until at last she lay down and licked my hand. Her tongue was as coarse
as a nutmeg grater, and my hand felt as if the skin was being rasped
off.
“There was also a leopard in the garden with which I used to play a
great deal, but which I never loved so well as the lioness. He was
smaller and more active, and soon learned to jump upon my shoulders when
I stooped down, or to climb up the tree to which he was tied, whenever I
commanded him. But he was not so affectionate as the lioness, and
sometimes forgot to draw in his claws when he played, so that he not
only tore my clothing, but scratched my hands. I still have the marks of
one of his teeth on the back of my right hand.
“My old lioness was never rough, and I have frequently, when she had
stretched out to take a nap, sat upon her back for half an hour at a
time, smoking my pipe or reading.
“I assure you I was very sorry to part with her, and when I saw her for
the last time one moonlight night, I gave her a good hug and an
affectionate kiss. She would have kissed me back if her mouth had not
been too large; but she licked my hand to show that she loved me, then
laid her big head upon the ground and went to sleep.
“Dear old lioness! I wonder if you ever think of me. I wonder if you
would know me, should we ever see each other again.”
If our late minister to Berlin, the accomplished poet, linguist, and
cosmopolitan, could give his attention to animals as friends and
companions, there can be nothing belittling in reading their praises as
said or sung by those whom we all delight to honour.
Hamerton, indeed, makes a comparison in which we come out but second
best. He says: “How much weariness has there been in the human race
during the last fifty years, because the human race can not stop
politically where it was, and, finding no rest, is pushed to a strange
future that the wisest look forward to gravely, as certainly very dark
and probably very dangerous! Meanwhile, have the bees suffered any
political uneasiness? have they doubted the use of royalty or begrudged
the cost of their queen? Have those industrious republicans, the ants,
gone about uneasily seeking after a sovereign? Has the eagle grown weary
of his isolation and sought strength in the practice of socialism? Has
the dog become too enlightened to endure any longer his position as
man’s humble friend, and contemplated a canine union for mutual
protection against masters? No; the great principles of these existences
are superior to change, and that which man is perpetually seeking—a
political order in perfect harmony with his condition—the brute has
inherited with his instincts.”
Cowper, in The Task, devotes several pages to the proper treatment of
animals, and expresses his admiration for their many noble qualities:
Distinguished much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,
From creatures, that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable; and God some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse
Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.
Superior as we are, they yet depend
Not more on human help than we on theirs.
Their strength, or speed, or vigilance, were given
In aid of our defects. In some are found
Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
That man’s attainments in his own concerns,
Matched with the expertness of the brutes in theirs,
Are ofttimes vanquished and thrown far behind.
Some show that nice sagacity of smell,
And read with such discernment, in the port
And figure of the man, his secret aim,
That oft we owe our safety to a skill
We could not teach, and must despair to learn.
Bryant, in his well-known Lines to a Waterfowl, has a striking thought:
... He who from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.